In recent years, nonlinear video editing apparatuses have become increasingly popular due to an improvement in processing speed of CPUs, an increase in speed and capacity of hard disk drives (HDDs), as well as an improvement in data compression coding technology. A nonlinear video editing apparatus digitizes, encodes and stores a video from a camera, a video tape recorder or the like, as video data in an HDD.
With the nonlinear video editing apparatus, the video data is edited in such a manner that the encoded video stored in the HDD is read, decoded and played back, and an operator edits the video data while watching the video on a monitor. For example, video data to be edited is played back, and the operator sets a starting position (in-point) and an ending position (out-point) of a scene to be clipped in the video data while watching the video that is being played. The in-point and the out-point are associated with the video data and stored as editing information, and a clip of the clipped scenes is generated based on this information (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H09-233430, for example).
With the above nonlinear video editing, it is not necessary to actually copy or cut original video data to generate a clip. When playing a clip, specifying the clip causes video data from the in-point to the out-point to be decoded and played back, referring to the editing information.